Plans for an enormous retail mall at Ground Zero have infuriated a 9/11 family activist, who claimed yesterday the memorial is becoming little more than a way to attract shoppers.

“It seems to me that retail is being contemplated based on millions of people coming to the site for the purpose of seeing a 9/11 memorial,” said Debra Burlingame, whose brother was a pilot aboard the hijacked airliners that hit the Pentagon.

“What is galling is that while they are planning a 600,000-square-foot underground mall, their own studies are acknowledging that they will have to turn away 10,000 people a day at the memorial,” Burlingame said.

“This is a bait-and-switch operation.”

Lower Manhattan officials reacted quickly to Burlingame’s charges, pointing out the retail space was designed after a long planning process to replace the World Trade Center shopping plaza – one of the nation’s busiest and an important part of economic activity downtown before Sept. 11.

“The Port Authority is extremely respectful of the memorial and what it means to those who lost loved ones on 9/11. For that reason, there will be no retail located in the memorial district,” read a statement from the PA, which controls the site.

The shops would be located in and beneath the proposed office towers and in the transportation hub – not on the memorial site.

Burlingame has been a leading voice in opposing the “International Freedom Center” at Ground Zero. She said family members would not oppose retail at the trade center if the museum is replaced with an exhibit dedicated only to 9/11.